After years of hitting the ‘must-see’ bucket lists, I’ve realized that my favorite travel memories aren’t from the crowded squares or the famous landmarks—they’re from the detours.
This year, I’ve decided to embrace ‘slow travel.’ Instead of rushing to cram 5 cities into 10 days, I’m finding that spending 3–4 days in a single, lesser-known town offers a completely different perspective.
My current strategy:
Ask the Servers: In any city, I skip the ‘Top 10’ lists and just ask my server at a local café, ‘Where do you go for dinner on your day off?’ It has never steered me wrong.
The 3-Vineyard Limit: Whether in Napa, Santa Barbara, or the hills of Italy, I’ve stopped trying to visit more than three wineries a day. Quality over quantity!
Go for the ‘Vibe’: Sometimes, the best part of a trip isn’t the museum—it’s sitting in a local park with a bottle of wine, people-watching, and just letting the day happen.
Questions for you guys:
What’s the most underrated town or city you’ve visited where you felt like you truly ‘connected’ with the place?
Do you prefer a planned-out, hourly itinerary, or do you leave your days completely blank?
What’s one ‘tourist trap’ you wish you could have skipped in hindsight?
I’m currently mapping out my next few trips and would love to hear how you all are balancing ‘sightseeing’ with actual relaxation.
I don’t know, 3-4 days doesn’t sound particularly “slow” to me!
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten more flexible on all accounts and embraced the fact that different people will travel for different reasons at different times. Which is fine.
When I was in my 20s and first traveling, I wanted to “see” things, which sometimes meant focusing on the “highlights”. Which is fine. There was so much I hadn’t seen.
These days, I’m much more interested in “doing” things. Usually connecting with friends, or some sort of activity (obviously wine visits are an activity for many of us here).
But it all depends on the trip.
And obviously if you really want to “connect” with a place, you need to live there, ideally for at least a year, so you can go through the different annual rhythms.
We had a good thread on this question, especially as it relates to meals, here:
Vicenza, Italy. Between Venice and Verona. Lovely little town, great main piazza, great theatre, nice cafes and wine bars. Plenty of easy day trips (Verona, Cittadella). We were there for a week and would have happily stayed for longer.
I am far from an expert, but for work and play I’ve spent ~120 weeks in France.
Without going into any detail, completely off the top of my head, here are a bunch of places I recommend. Most are wine-related. Some are more tourist-ridden than others. Avoid the south when it’s hot (tourists and discomfort). There are a lot of recommendations in Languedoc and Roussillon because that’s where I owned a vineyard and spent a lot of time.
I list nothing bigger than a small city. Get city recommendations elsewhere.
Special favorites have a *
Colmar*
Dieppe
Roscoff
Chantilly
Senlis
Bar-sur-Seine*
Auxerre
Avallon
Chagny*
Tournus
Nantua
Chambery*
Grenoble
Tain l’Hermitage*
Saint-Flour
Briancon
Aix-en-Provence*
Saint-Mathieu-de-Treviers
Agde
Laguiole
Narbonne*
Perpignan
Carcassonne
Castelnaudary
Limoux
Perigueux
Bayonne*
Ile d’Oleron
Anybody headed to any of these places, happy to give some reccos as best as I can remember.
Lucas. Having read several of your threads. Can I ask - do you have Claude write your posts / replies? Haha.
Good info and content but I read way too much AI documents at work I’m triggered but AI phrasing
Agreed. And I’ve never understood it. By the time you write the prompt, you could have written the post. But I guess some people really struggle with writing.
In an environment as nuanced and detail-oriented as a wine forum, the integration of AI into the drafting process offers a meaningful advantage—not as a replacement for human perspective, but as a force multiplier for clarity, precision, and efficiency.
Ultimately, using AI in this context is less about automation and more about augmentation. It elevates the baseline quality of discourse, enabling participants to contribute more effectively, more confidently, and with a broader command of the subject matter. In a space where detail and clarity matter, that edge is hard to ignore.
We are big time sightseers while traveling but try to squeeze in some slower pace days as well to balance things out. I think this is much easier to do in smaller, laid back towns with less touristy sights. In terms of places we have been where I felt that connection, slower pace and sense of relaxation, Slovenia (as a country) and then a few cities would include Carcassone in France, Split and Zadar in Croatia, Bergen in Norway, Ghent in Belgium, and the Ticino region in Switzerland including Lugano and Locarno.
I felt like most of those places allowed us to settle in and really enjoy what the towns had to offer while still offering plenty to see and experience.
